Our Own Dragons
by Lucky Gun
Summary: When a bad reaction to a gas grenade makes Shepard relive a terrible memory, Kaidan finds himself on both ends of a gun. Paragon FemShep/Alenko, early Shenko, mid ME1, WARNING: Extremely disturbing subject material, some language


Title: Our Own Dragons

Author: Lucky Gun

Description: When a bad reaction to a gas grenade makes Shepard relive a terrible memory, Kaidan finds himself on both ends of a gun. Paragon FemShep/Alenko, peri-Shenko, mid ME1, WARNING: Extremely disturbing subject material, some language

A/N: This started off as one thing and became something else. There is some rough subject matter in here, and I recommend caution. Please be aware that, as with all my other ME stories, I have an idea beta but not a full beta; any mistakes in grammar/spelling are mine alone. Also, thank you so much to those who have read and reviewed. Rocket Rochelle, you rock! Gwen, you keep reviewing as a guest, but I want to say thanks to you! You've given me some awesome feedback, and I wanted to make sure you know I LOVED your reviews on Dark Cloud.

* * *

He'd only been senior once so far, when that beacon on Eden Prime had taken her out and left him in charge. This was the second time.

The fight had been long, drawn out over six hours and a square mile of rocky terrain and human ruins. Comms were useless in the electrified environment, and they'd been forced to rely on flares to coordinate their positions. Shepard had been in the rear, sniping from whatever hidden nests she could find, and Kaidan and Garrus had been flanking the mercenaries from the side. The Mako had been left behind and they were pushing their enemies to the edges of a massive crater, hoping to either force a surrender or block a retreat. They fought through an old colony, long abandoned, ghostly and haunting.

For the first long while, everything was fine. Tense, but fine. A quarter of a mile away, Kaidan could hear the familiar staccato of Alliance rifle fire. Behind him, there was the staggered but comforting report of a high powered sniper rifle. They moved forward as a unit, never in sight but always working together, and the first five hours of check-ins had gone smoothly. Green flares flashed over the ever-twilight skies, falling to the ground with long trails of smoke, and the lieutenant allowed himself the brief thought that this mission might just go smoothly.

Then he realized that it had been at least four minutes since Shepard's last snipe. He brushed it off, figuring she was changing nests, as he took out a pack of mercs, relying on the light blade from his omni tool and his pistol to dispatch them. Thermal clips were becoming few and far between, both the Alliance squad and the cutthroat freelancers feeling the long burn of battle. Kaidan's amp wasn't overtaxed quite yet, but he didn't want to push his luck. So he cut through them, sunk to the floor of the skyport staging area to catch his breath, and waited for another crack of her rifle.

It never came.

He kept his eyes forward, training and brutal self-control forcing his movements, remembering her orders in the cargo bay of the Normandy as they readied their weapons.

" _These assholes are dug in thick, and they've been pirating around the system for three years. They know the layout, know the foxholes. But Hackett needs them taken out, needs this system back under Alliance control to keep the Geth from getting a foothold in the part of the spiral. Green flares or red, no in between. You get compromised, you light a flare. If it's the last thing you do, light a goddamn flare. I don't like our helmet to helmet comms being down, but we don't have an alternative. Keep moving forward, flush them out of the town and into the open. With luck they'll scatter and won't regroup before we can pick them off. But, no matter what, keep moving forward. Do not go back, do not give them any ground you've taken from them. Pop flares, move forward, don't die. Understood?"_

So he swallowed hard and tried not to think about the summer sun of her biotics as he pressed forward, his throat tight. He kept telling himself that she couldn't get any clear shots, she had gotten bored and moved forward to help with her L3, that she had fallen back to grab the Mako and pick them up. But her own orders, the ones keeping him moving forward, were ones she wouldn't break herself, especially not to save them a walk.

When twin green flares shot from his right, and Kaidan realized he hadn't shot someone in ten minutes and the edge of the town was at his six, he sighed in relief and popped his own affirmation. Dead and gone, the colony was clear. He spun in place and waited to see the answering single or double green fireworks from Shepard in the sky, and didn't. Five minutes later, double timing it to their rendezvous point and finding a confused Turian waiting for him, alone, the lieutenant felt that same tightness in his throat rise to strangle his words.

He glanced around and his voice was rough with exhaustion as he asked, "Where's the commander?"

Shoulders shrugging in a helpless gesture, Garrus' voice was just as strained through his modulator. "I haven't seen her. Haven't heard from her gun in about forty minutes, either. I thought maybe she moved up, met up with you. You haven't seen her?"

Shaking his head in the negative, Kaidan tapped his omni tool and checked his oxygen level; it was getting low, nearing thirty five percent, and he cursed.

"Dammit...I've got two hours of air left. That'll get me back to the Mako at least. You?" Garrus kept his rifle in his left hand as he opened his own display. The low growl that came through the thin atmosphere was getting familiar. "Near the same. Figure we've got to walk uphill to get to it; that'll drain our sats pretty quickly. Shepard had her rebreather on, right? So her O2 is fine."

The Turian paused, then simply looked at him, and Kaidan inhaled slowly as he realized that, for the moment, he was senior. "Okay, we'll head back, sweeping the compound as we go. With any luck, Shepard realized we would be pushing our reserves and went back to get the truck. Either way, stay frosty," he ordered with a nod.

Garrus dropped his rifle to his talon and held it ready as they started moving, falling in line behind him. The lieutenant tried to shove away the sensation that this was so wrong, so outside the bounds of normalcy. Garrus was always at his left, and Kaidan was always behind and to the right of Shepard. It's just the way it went, the way it had gone since their first drop.

It just was.

They cleared the rest of the town relatively quickly, pushing to the outside edges, coming up on the main entry that had originally broken through. The wall wasn't terribly tall, maybe ten feet, old turrets dotting the top. Kaidan slowed and tossed up a fist as he stared at one of the guns. Garrus stopped behind him, weapon up and panning around, but he stayed silent. Cocking his head, the lieutenant ran through his memory, recollection enhanced by the eezo in his blood, and put the visual of the wall from six hours previously up against the one he currently had.

Three meters from the gate gap, one of the turrets was turned about twenty degrees from standard. With a quick set of hand gestures, he and Garrus flanked the area of the wall below the turret, breaking cover at the same time. Even seeing what he had been dreading, Kaidan still only grit his teeth and checked the corners of the alleyway before standing.

"Clear!" he called as he jogged across the dusty yellow ground.

Shepard was sitting, leaning up against the wall, one knee jacked up to her chest. Her head was turned, the side of her helmet touching her shoulder, and her massive sniper rifle was laying across her lap. Her hands were lax, though her right was wrapped around her heavy pistol. In front of her, two dead mercenaries were laid out, heads blown clean through.

Kaidan saw evidence of scuffles in the dirt and some deep divots as he came up to his commander, dropping to his knees beside her. He immediately reached out and pulled her guns away, fully expecting the movement to cause a violent reaction. Instead, she stayed as she was.

"She alive?" Garrus asked quietly behind him, and Kaidan refused to admit that his hand was shaking as he checked her omni tool with a practiced eye before engaging his own. The orange medical suite spun up rapidly, and he placed his hand on the side of her neck as the sensors in his glove took her biometrics. Glancing at the readout, he let out a breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding.

"Yeah, she's just unconscious. Looks like a concussion, sprained ankle. No bullet wounds, nothing major," he breathed, sitting back on his heels with a deep sigh. He frowned at the silent woman in front of him for a moment before he glanced up at the wall, the sunlight glinting off the weaponry at the top of it.

"She must've gone up to get a firing line. But, what, she fell? Short drop; shouldn't have been enough to knock her out," he hazarded, confused. She wasn't a gazelle, but Shepard was still pretty sure footed. Hearing metal on metal, he turned and saw Garrus kick at a small, crudely-shaped orb half buried in the dirt near the edge of the wall. "Some type of gas grenade," he muttered, stooping to poke it with a claw. "They must've found her nest and thrown it, waited for it to smoke her out. Shouldn't her rebreather have filtered it out?"

Answering with a nod, the medic said, "It's not infallible, which is why I usually stick with canisters. But it's a lighter system, and she uses a plug-in that helps regulate her breathing, helps her accuracy. It definitely has advantages." Looking back down at his omni tool, Kaidan cycled through a few screens before pausing on one for a couple of seconds, then closed it. "There's something in her bloodstream but without skin contact I can't get a read on it." Standing, he inhaled slowly and then exhaled, taking a two count to get his rapid heart rate under control. He wasn't used to seeing Shepard brought down like this, and it had hit a little closer to a point deep in his chest than he was comfortable.

"Garrus, can you carry her? Turians desat slower than humans," he explained as he pulled his rifle from where he'd replaced it on his back. Garrus didn't hesitate before shouldering his own firearm and kneeling where Kaidan had just been. With a smooth movement, he pulled the unconscious woman up over his shoulders, settling her carefully over his armor, and nodded once to the lieutenant. Kaidan took half a minute to break down her sniper rifle and he hooked it to the magnetic grips on the small of his back, then pressed her pistol against his left leg. Hefting the comforting weight of his primary weapon in his arms, Kaidan glanced over Shepard one more time.

Her short blond hair was mostly hidden behind her helmet, but a few strands were visible in the thin line of her visor. They were damp with sweat and curled against her forehead, and her green eyes were closed tightly. Her light armor, grey and covered with white and black digital camouflage patterns, was slicked with the greasy remnants of the gas. Without thinking, Kaidan stepped forward and ran his fingers over the intakes on her mask, wiping away any residual chemicals from them. His hand moved slowly, almost caressing, and he blinked at his own movements and pulled back sharply, ignoring the sideways look he got from Garrus.

The walk back to the Mako was very, very quiet.

* * *

"What do you mean, she's missing?"

Kaidan stared at the doctor in front of him, who was looking appropriately abashed. They were standing in the middle of the infirmary which, until twenty minutes before, had been occupied. But he'd had to file a report with Hackett and check on their course back to civilized space, where they'd left the rest of their complement. Running a mission with a skeleton crew wasn't ideal, but it had been the middle of a four day shore leave when the orders had come in. Shepard was softer than she looked sometimes, and with her command crew's approval, she'd routed them to the backwater planet with the thought that it would be a ten hour jaunt.

Now, nearly twenty two hours later, they were limping back to the Citadel with an absentee commander.

"Lieutenant, I don't know what to say. She was unconscious, status unchanged, and in that bed," here she pointed at a pile of rumpled blankets on a mattress, "when I went to give Joker his weekly meds. I was up top for fifteen minutes, and she was gone when I got back. I looked everywhere I could think to check and then I called you."

Brutally beating back the edges of a migraine that desperately wanted to form, Kaidan raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay...okay, she's somewhere on the ship; not like she stepped outside for a stroll. But why would she just take off like that?"

Here, Karin pointed at the digital display that was next to the empty cot. "I identified the substance in her bloodstream as a mixture of carbogen and diflouromethane. It's a strange combination; given your description of the gas grenade, I assume it was a homemade contraption, and the inhalant a backroom chemist's attempt at warfare." Kaidan stared at the lights dancing along the EEG, multicolored waves looping the last data it had recorded before the sensors had been removed.

"Wait...are those her alpha waves?" he asked suddenly, finger tapping at an irregular pattern low on the scope. Karin nodded and frowned at the screen as she answered, "Yes, they're extremely depressed. And her hi-beta waves are the opposite, exceedingly active. These along with the effects of her concussion, it's a very dangerous sequence. Wherever she is, she's likely unaware of the outside world and locked inside one of her own. When she was in here, I wasn't as concerned; I had turned on the isolation protocols. But out there..."

Swallowing, Kaidan nodded as he let his hand fall, a strange dread creeping through his gut. "Hallucinations of a biotic soldier in a metal balloon sailing through a vacuum...not my idea of a good time," he admitted, crossing his arms.

After a few moments, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair, sorting his thoughts. "Do what you can to find something to counteract what's in her system. I'll get the rest of the crew to start searching the ship; I've got to report this to Anderson and just hope Udina doesn't catch wind of it. 'First human Spectre goes off reservation' is not the headline he'd like on tomorrow's newscast."

Karin nodded and immediately turned to the lab tables along the far wall of the infirmary while Kaidan turned to leave, his eyes resting on the empty bed just a little longer than was necessary. He quickly climbed the stairs to the main level of the ship and headed to the cockpit.

"Joker, I need to make a shipwide broadcast, and then I need you to get me a line to Anderson on the Citadel," he ordered without preamble as he crossed the threshold, and the pilot turned halfway in his seat and glanced at him with a raised eyebrow, a funny grin on his face. "We're running on sublight, lieutenant. Why not just round everyone up yourself and kill a few extra minutes?"

Sighing, Kaidan closed his eyes and answered softly, "Because Shepard has disappeared from the infirmary and is somewhere on the ship under the influence of a gaseous psychotropic."

Blanching, Joker stared at him for a long second. "Uh, best leave the jokes to me, Alenko. Ya know, my nickname? Sort of my area of expertise."

Shaking his head, the soldier growled, "Trust me, this isn't what I expected to do with my day. Give me shipwide."

Turning and pulling up the comms panel, the pilot muttered under his breath, "Yeah, I bet not. Cause that would mean things were actually going right for us for a change."

There was no answer to that, and he nodded once at Kaidan as the lieutenant leaned forward next to his chair.

"This is Acting CO Alenko. Commander Shepard has gone missing from the medbay and is AWOL AMA. Due to complications from the last mission, it's unlikely she'll be fully aware of what's she's doing. Given her training, she is to be treated as armed and dangerous. Search, but search in pairs and keep in radio contact; Joker will be coordinating communications. Alenko out."

Cutting the comms with a snort, the seated man groused, "Thanks for the extra responsibilities, lieutenant. Not like trying to keep my baby on a straight course with fuel disparities isn't already fun enough." He paused then, even as various crew members started keying up on the main repeater, and he glanced sideways at the man who was still standing beside him. "She's, uh...she's gonna be fine."

Nodding, the officer agreed absently, "Yeah. Course she is." He didn't move for a few moments, staring at the comm panel lights, before shaking off whatever had settled over him. He spun on his heel and walked quickly out of the cockpit. "And don't forget to get me Anderson!"

Joker's distracted affirmation followed him down the hall to the CIC, and he walked around the ship display and past the galaxy map without a glance. Stepping into the room at the far end, he waited until the door hissed shut behind him. A glance at the panel at the far end showed it was dim, disengaged, and he exhaled sharply as he sagged.

"Goddammit, Shepard," he whispered to himself as he scrubbed his hands over his face.

He'd felt fear when he saw her slumped against the wall at the old colony. Hell, he'd felt something past fear, something deeper. Terror didn't even come close to describing what he'd felt. And panic wasn't the word he'd used to describe his state of mind when he answered Chakwas' quick and urgent summons.

Desolation, that was a more appropriate statement.

In the years since he'd become an L2 with the Alliance, he had found people relying on him. There were many, even with the bias in the world against his implant, because he worked hard, fought hard, and had proved himself to every command he'd been assigned. He'd cut through all the bigotry and bullshit that surrounded all biotics, his implant specifically, and made himself absolutely indispensable.

Now, for the first time, he found himself relying on someone else.

In six months, Shepard had undone a lifetime of conditioning in him. His suspicion – a natural byproduct of his training, not to mention ever-lifesaving – had faded in her absolute, undeserved, uncompromising trust in him. Her style of leadership was to stand on the front lines and take the bayonets for her crew; it had earned fidelity from everyone, but in him, it was beyond dedication. It grew from loyalty to devotion in the simple smiles she gave him in passing, the light touch of her fingers on his arm, the way her biotic breathed against his with a brush of summer and passing rain.

And God help him, he needed her.

That scared him more than anything, he admitted to himself as he quietly waited for the panel to light up. He wasn't a cynic; well, maybe a bit, but it came with the territory. But he knew that needing something so fallible, so horrifyingly human, was a sure step on the path of self-destruction. So he had waited, breath baited, for her to turn, to change, to look at him with doe eyes full of fear above a broken arm. He waited for that reevaluation in her gaze when a migraine grounded him for twelve hours at a time. He waited for her to need him less than everyone else.

In six months, she seemed to only need him more.

Those simple smiles became deeper, fuller, and given to only him. Touches on his arm grew more deliberate, though more secretive. During late nights in the mess, when they were separated by a table, reports, and two cups of decaf, their biotics intertwined and danced for hours. Shifts in the medbay, before locked in a haze of drugs and pain, moved to the starboard observatory, the smell of her pepper shampoo replacing sterile disinfectant. During the worst of their battles, when his implant burned and his skin shed energy like a nova, she looked at him with fear – fear _for him_ , not of him.

Swallowing, Kaidan acknowledged that, in all the ways he never expected, he was in trouble.

He straightened as the holographic engines revved to life and the alert panel began blinking. He subconsciously tugged at his shirt and flattened his hair before palming the activation trigger. It only took a few seconds before the image of Captain Anderson ghosted into existence before him. Snapping off a salute at attention, Kaidan gave the man the respect he deserved.

Shaking his head, Anderson waved away the protocol and his voice warbled a little over the speakers as he said, "Put that away, lieutenant."

Blinking, he did so, used to a relaxed decorum around Shepard but not anyone else. Distantly, he wondered if her captain was who she'd learned it from.

"Thank you for taking my call, sir. It's, ah...we've encountered a delicate situation," he started hesitantly, wondering exactly how he was going to word this. Scoffing, Anderson crossed his arms and replied, "I gathered that from the words of Mr. Moreau. He mentioned something about a shitstorm?"

Clearing his throat, Alenko nodded once, tightly.

"Sir, you are aware from Admiral Hackett that Commander Shepard was injured during our last mission."

It was an assured statement; Shepard was a favorite of the brass for reasons he knew and didn't know, and he was certain her status was common knowledge among them. Indeed, Anderson sighed heavily and his entire form seemed to deflate a bit.

"Yes, he messaged me after you reported in. I'm impressed, lieutenant. You've held together the crew admirably in a crap situation, and even Joker had some praise for you. Seems like, without your leadership, this could have gone much worse than it did," he said, and Kaidan tried not to blush at the words, especially given what he was about to reveal.

"Ah, thank you sir, but I should probably stop you there. Commander Shepard, she's, uh, disappeared from medical, sir."

There were a few beats of silence that were only broken by slight static before Anderson groaned and shook his head. "Of course she has. What happened?"

Kaidan fell into a more at-ease position with the informal briefing. "She was under constant watch, but the second it was relaxed, she slipped out. Her rebreather didn't filter out all the toxins of a gas grenade, and that, coupled with her concussion, led to some temporary changes in her brainwaves."

Frowning hard, the captain asked immediately, "Altered mental status?"

Nodding, Kaidan couldn't stop his own voice from thinning as he responded, "Yes, sir. Doctor Chakwas believes she's suffering from hallucinations, or at least is susceptible to them. I've got the crew searching in pairs. Told them to be careful. I'm going to join them, I just thought that you deserved an update, captain."

Shaking his head, Anderson said, "Wait until you get back to the Citadel. We can use the biometrics to scan for her without risking injury to her or anyone else."

Shifting in place, Kaidan hesitated before replying, "Sir...we won't be back for almost two weeks. We're traveling at less than half our usual jump speed. I don't believe her condition can wait that long."

Even in the swirling lights, it was easy to make out the other man's surprise. "What did you do to my ship, lieutenant?"

Wincing, Kaidan explained, "It happened just before I got the message from the doctor. Fuel line to the drive was compromised, unknown causes. Joker's having difficulties keeping us on a straight course due to some distribution errors in the programming. Both engineers are still on the Citadel; per the admiral, the ship diagnostics cleared us to fly without them as long as we stayed within the quadrant. I sent Garrus to look at it, but Tali would be better, and she is on leave fighting an infection."

But something in the tilt of the captain's head made him realize that other man had stopped listening awhile back.

"Fuel line," he muttered to himself, and he was quiet for only a few seconds longer before he stood straight and fixed Kaidan with a look that could've pinned him to the floor. "Lieutenant, you need to find the commander, expediently."

Confused, the biotic said plainly, "That was always the plan, captain."

Shaking his head, Anderson clarified, "No, you need to find her yesterday. You need to find her before anything else suspiciously goes wrong with the ship."

Taking an involuntary step forward even as his brain made connections he didn't believe, he asked, "Wait, what're you implying, captain? You think Commander Shepard sabotaged the Normandy? Do you know something pertinent to this situation, sir?"

Looking to the side at something on his end of the connection, the captain had an edge to his voice as he clipped, "What I think or know is classified, lieutenant. All you need to know is what your orders are. Shepard is somewhere on the Normandy, altered and dangerous. Find her, now."

The display fizzled out without warning, and Kaidan stared into the sudden darkness, eyes wide.

"God _dammit_ , Shepard," he whispered again.

* * *

Groaning lowly, Kaidan reached back and eased some of the tension out of his neck as he listened to the sound-offs resound over the comm line in his ear. There were eight of them, and he was both relieved and disappointed. After his conversation with Anderson, he'd changed tactics. Assuming the captain was right, and Shepard had sabotaged her own ship in her delirium, then the critical systems had to be secured. So he'd assigned Garrus as protection to the cockpit and Wrex to the shuttle bay, and two other corpsmen to the engine room. Another, he'd paired with the doctor in the infirmary, though with the isolation field up, the entire backup and all redundant systems would have to be taken out before anyone could get in there.

Of course, Shepard knew how to do that.

The entirety of the skeleton crew dispatched, Kaidan was the only one searching. Starting on the top deck and working his way down, he was slowly clearing as much of the ship as he could. There were some areas he couldn't reach, but in those places, he simply flared his biotics and waited for the touch of her own. It wasn't something she could hide, the hum of her implant against the back of his, and he relied on that fact.

"Still no luck?" Wrex asked as he came into the cargo bay.

Kaidan sighed as he set his rifle on the table the Krogan was leaning against. He pushed away the reminder that it was Ashley's table – that wound was still too raw – and placed his palms flat on the table, locking his elbows and letting his head hang below his shoulders. It helped beat back the headache that was dancing behind his eyes, if only a little.

"Nothing. If I didn't know better I'd say she was off the ship. I had Joker check the life pods, just in case. They're all in their berths."

Wrex huffed a little laugh and shrugged. "She's good at what she does. What's her specialty, infiltration?"

There was a tingle as the skin around his implant stretched as he straightened, and Kaidan cracked his neck. "Yeah," he breathed, a view of her green eyes flashing in his mind. "Pairing that training with her biotics and sniper rifle, she can drop an entire base by herself. She's a vanguard, through and through, first in and last out. Oohrah."

The giant mercenary chortled a bit and growled, "Let's hope she doesn't turn that around on us."

An icy ball of worry was growing in his gut, and the lieutenant swallowed and cautiously agreed, "Yeah. Yeah, let's hope."

They were both quiet for a moment before Kaidan silently picked up his rifle and turned towards the engine room, giving Wrex a small nod as he left. The fact that it had been said out loud – _she could turn on us_ – seemed to make it that much more of a possibility. It was like shining light on a nightmare and finding out that it was so much worse that imagined.

Stepping through the door leading into the roundabout to the drive core, Kaidan came to a quick halt as every sense abruptly flared with warning. The entry slipped shut behind him, and everything seemed normal, except for the fact that the crewman he had assigned to guard that entrance wasn't there anymore. Hefting his rifle and ensuring with another glance that it was chambered with concussive rounds only, Kaidan slowly crept forward. The path curved to the left before it spilled into the core room, and he stepped carefully towards it, rifle ready, turning left and right as he slowly cleared the area.

The drive core spun as usual, if not a little unsteadily, and it lit up the darkness. The lights were off, and a quick glance at the control panel showed no reason for it. There was no sign of the two guards he'd heard from less than ten minutes prior, either. Swallowing, he turned slowly in the room and dropped the rifle barrel a few inches.

"Commander? Are you in here?" he called, his voice echoing against the metal walls. "I gather you're probably not feeling too well at the moment. Doctor Chakwas is putting together something to fix that."

He felt like an idiot, talking to probably nothing, and he pushed out with his biotics, waiting for the telltale brush of hers. After several seconds, he straightened and set his gun against his shoulder, aiming it at the ceiling. For better or worse, he was completely alone. He reached up and tapped his comm line.

"Joker, it's Alenko," he said quietly, and he waited for the affirmation over the line before he continued, "I'm in the engine room and it's empty; Specialists Eisner and Botham are missing, and the lights are dead."

There were a few seconds of silence before the pilot responded, "Shit, I'm not getting any static from their radios, either. But I'm not reading any master codes or faults from the electrics in there."

Glancing at the blackened lenses around him, he responded mildly, "Well, read _me_ , Joker: the lights are down."

There was another soft curse before Joker answered, "Yeah, you got it, lieutenant. What's your plan?"

Confronted with the very real scenario that Shepard was absolutely not in her right mind, Kaidan hesitated a beat before he said, "Pull everyone back to the cockpit, including the doc and her escort, and have Wrex grab the emergency rations. I want everyone in one place. I'm not risking more people." He waited a moment before glancing at the destabilized drive core. "I'm going to keep looking for her. I'll clear this deck and move to the maintenance corridors. Radio silence unless I contact you. If you don't hear from me in two hours, lock down all security doors and keep heading for the Citadel. Keep an emergency beacon on standby; if you think for even a second that this ship's physical integrity or your control over it is in jeopardy, you launch it, understood? Under no circumstances is anyone to leave that deck unless I give you my authorization codes."

The shock on the other end of the line was nearly physical. "Wait, what? You're going after her after she's ghosted two guys and diverted half our engine power? Lieutenant, she could kill you and the rest of us before an Alliance patrol even hears the beacon. We're still three hundred and twenty hours from the Citadel!"

Gritting his teeth and absolutely refusing to admit that Joker had even half a point, Kaidan growled, "You have your orders, Mr. Moreau. Follow them to the letter or I swear I will have you tried for mutiny when we make port."

Where the pilot could have been a jackass, he instead signed off with, "I'll do my job, lieutenant. You just watch your back down there."

The steady background noise of half-heard static cut out, and, for the first time since he'd met Shepard, her hand shaking his with a mischievous smile hiding in her gaze, Kaidan felt utterly alone. He stared at the floor for a second before sucking in a steadying breath and dropping his rifle to swing it back into a ready position.

In the split second the rifle was aimed at the deck, he sensed fast motion behind him, and something hot and hard slammed into the side of his head. It took half a heartbeat and he was on the floor, dropping heavily, unconsciousness rolling over him as he thought that Joker owed him an 'I told you so'.

* * *

He had no idea how long he'd been out, and didn't get any clues from the pounding in his head and the faint trace of copper on his tongue. He couldn't stop the groan that crawled out of his throat as he tried to raise a hand to assess the damage. Kaidan's eyes flew open as he realized he was completely restrained, and he jerked hard against his bindings. He was sitting on a heavy crate, his feet flat on the ground. His arms were pulled straight down behind the crate and tied to piping that ran up the wall behind him, secondary lines running from bicep to bicep, elbow to elbow, and wrist to wrist. There was a sharp tug at his throat and he realized there was a thin strap snug against his neck, anchored to the wall. His ankles and knees were shoulder-width apart and immobilized by several runs of cord, as well. There were dim lights in the distance, and they swam in his vision as he quickly looked around, confused, trying to piece together the last pieces of his memory.

Then his eyes fell on her, and he froze as everything came rushing back.

He was in the lower portions of the engine room – that much he could tell from the rumble of the core in his ears – and even though it was dark, he could just make out the very still form of his commander. She was sitting on the floor across from him, her back pressed up against a wall, her knees up against her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins. Her face was hidden in the cove her body made, but he could see blood. There were cuts along the side of her neck leading to her port, and various bruises and scrapes were obvious along her legs. Her bare legs, he noted with discomfort. She'd been in nothing more than underwear and a medical gown when she'd left the infirmary. Now, she had a pair of boots pulled over her feet, laces trailing, and...well, that was interesting.

Shepard was wearing his shirt.

Glancing down at his chest, Kaidan blinked at the confirmation that his black and white camo button-down was missing, and he was down to his plain white tee shirt. As he moved, he realized, a little late, that he was gagged.

 _That could complicate things,_ he thought darkly.

When he looked up, her flinched back. Shepard was kneeling in front of him a foot away, his rifle in his face, her finger resting comfortably on the trigger. He hadn't even heard her move, and he hadn't seen where she'd pulled the gun from. He blinked, trying to slow his breathing through his nose, and swallowed hard as he looked in her eyes.

Any warmth, any familiarity, was completely gone, and in its place was a cold sort of calculation.

"You're the one they wanted, so they'll trade me. They'll trade me for you."

Kaidan heard no memory in her words, and he waited, refusing to move. His lack of reaction may have angered her, and the soldier abruptly lashed out, smacking him hard across his face. The tight cloth gag dampened her movements only a bit, and his eyes stung.

"You don't have a fucking choice. I'm in charge now, I'm making the plays," she snapped as her face flushed, and he slowly turned his head back to her, trying to work a bit of moisture into his mouth. He'd relied on being able to talk to her to get her to calm down. With that advantage taken away, he realized he didn't have much of a plan.

"I killed two to get free. If I did that, what do you think I'll be able to do to you?"

There was a heaviness that settled over his shoulders like a rock, and his eyes fell shut slowly as he hung his head. Her career was over. It didn't matter who on the admiralty board took up her cause, she would be court-martialed and tried and convicted. Until now, they could have written this off as the side-effect of a concussion, perfectly normal and acceptable. Hell, she was a Spectre; even if Shepard was insane, she would still be only half as crazy as the ones she hunted. But this, this was a crime.

This was murder.

A tight grip in his hair drew his attention, but he refused to open his eyes. He knew what he would see – green eyes unnaturally dark – and he didn't want to look. But her voice, it was so quiet and childish, and he couldn't help but listen.

"Please, just open your eyes," she whispered, such a reversal of tones, and when he did, there was a fresh weight in his gut as he saw fast tears trailing down her face. She was so close that her short blond hair floated across his face while her lips brushed his ear. "I proved it to them, you see? I promise, we're going to get through this, okay? Just trust me, please!"

He grabbed at the chance and hummed softly as he jerked his chin, putting as much understanding into his gaze as possible. He may not be able to save her career, but maybe he could save her life.

And his, too.

But she shook her head and whispered, "No, I told you. They..."

She trailed off and tilted her head, something catching her ear, something he couldn't hear. Shepard halfway turned where she sat, and Kaidan glanced at her port out of habit, then surged against his bindings, yanking hard against the ropes and choking himself out on his collar. His vision blurred and he coughed against the cloth in his mouth, fury darkening his vision as much as the lack of oxygen. His hands clenched into fists and he felt the ropes around his wrists cut into his skin. A calloused hand grabbed him by the hair again and shoved him back, easing his breathing. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, but the visual was still there.

He had seen knife wounds going to her port, the edges of the implant pulled up and away, a millimeter or so of bloody circuitry exposed, and the central blue ring of her implant glowed purple in the spots covered with blood. And Christ, she had done it to herself.

Then her hand was gone, there was a whisper of movement, and he knew she wasn't in front of him anymore. But he'd felt the brush of her fingers against his forehead as she pulled away, and a flame of hope burned bright inside of him. He could still feel her biotics, even though she'd actively hidden from him before and his were currently dark with his headache. He blinked his eyes open, forcing back the wetness in them, and, confirming he was alone, began to think.

He tested his bindings first, tiring quickly when he realized the knots grew tighter as he moved. He reached for his implant and it hummed indistinctly before shutting off, and he would've cursed if he could have. Kaidan looked around and firmly placed himself on the lowest level of the engineering decks, under and behind the drive core. If it wasn't for the sparse placement of lights along the walls, he would've been completely blind.

There were more pressing problems than his line of sight, though. Namely, the fact that no one was going to be looking for him. Truthfully, given Shepard's apparent exit from reality, he was somewhat thankful for that. It was tough enough, her getting the drop on him and now keeping him captive at the end of his own weapon. He didn't want the added stress of keeping someone else safe.

Also truthfully, he wasn't certain others wouldn't hold her actions against her. But he was a medic, four years of hard schooling and harder practicals bolstered by more than a few mental health courses. He was used to staunching blood loss and doing triage on the field under fire, just as he was used to watching for signs of post-traumatic stress and severe mental strain. What others might see as the normal compartmentalization of a soldier could actually be the first steps into pathological, involuntary dissociative disorders. And he was starting to recognize a few things in Shepard's movements and speech patterns that proved she was locked solidly in a hyper-aware, multisensory flashback. Fueled by chemicals and injury, he had no idea how to break her out of it.

She was gone for three hours.

By the time she came back, he was stiff, thirsty, and his biotic metabolism was burning hard, rendering any feeling from his implant numb. She was louder coming to him this time, her boots thunking along the decking. Shepard was still in his shirt, the rumpled bottom of it hanging to the middle of her thighs, and about half of the buttons were done up. She had tied her boots at some point, though they were still at least three sizes too big for her, and the rifle she'd stolen from him was hefted over one shoulder. The thick wedge of a K-Bar handle could barely be seen poking up from her left instep.

She didn't speak as she approached him, her face completely neutral, but she kept glancing over her shoulder with enough suspicion that Kaidan knew she thought she was being followed. Her jaw was tight, and when she came up to him, her left hand in a fist, he thought she was going to hit him again.

Instead, she reached forward, tore the gag out of his mouth with a rough movement, and as he panted for air, she shoved her lips against his.

There was shock coupled with the sort of confusion that he could feel to the marrow. Before he could move, she shifted, her mouth opened, and he felt a flood of warmth. There was a taste he couldn't immediately recognize in his sudden panic, and when he tried to clench his teeth closed, she jammed a thumb into the inside of his elbow. The lightning bolt of pain traveled straight to his jaw, and he gasped. She shoved her tongue between his teeth and forced what was in her mouth into his. It only took a few seconds, and when she pulled back, she slammed her palm against his lips and pinched his nose closed. He didn't fight for long, and it was only after he swallowed that he found his answer. It had been a protein and meal supplement, high calorie and rich in vitamins, though of a flavor he wasn't partial to. It was a biotic's MRE, something they sucked down in the middle of the longer missions.

He took deep breaths through his mouth as he remembered not to press against his collar, even though he could feel it chafing as he swallowed. Looking down at her, Kaidan tried to find his voice as she knelt in front of him.

"Shepard...whatever you're seeing, whatever you're hearing, none of it's real," he whispered, but she didn't look like she'd heard him. Hell, for all of her reaction, he may not have even spoken at all.

Instead of responding to him, she set her gun aside and looked him over, tightening his bonds where they may have loosened, cinching his wrist restraints to nearly the point of bleeding. He winced, but didn't complain. He was starting to piece together certain things, and he was hesitant to speak out of turn.

Looking up at him sharply, Shepard's eyes widened and she gave him a small smile as though he had just woken up. "Hey there. Sorry – that was all I could get. Anymore and they'd cut off my hands. Then I wouldn't be much use to you, huh?"

Her spoken cadence was strange, jagged and not nearly as refined as he was used to, and Kaidan hesitated for a second before trying again, changing tactics.

"It's...it's okay. You shouldn't do that again though. I don't want you getting caught."

His voice was rough with dehydration, and she frowned before twisting to grab something off the floor. She froze, staring at the empty space, her outstretched hand still before starting to shake. Kaidan glanced at the floor then her face, watching as the confusion he'd felt for the last several hours spread over her features.

"It was...it was right here. I had a...it was a silver flask. There was a dent in the right side. I set it down right here," she whispered, eyes darting back and forth.

Shepard glanced at him then, seeing him – _please let her see me!_ – and she just stared.

"I swear…I didn't let you die. I didn't let them kill you. Not..."

Her left arm came up slowly, as though in a dream, to rest on the back of her neck. She dropped her hand and stared at the slicks of red along it, her breathing nearly nonexistent. Then, like a switch, reality fell away again, and she looked up at him with another small smile. She replaced his gag with a deft hand and he felt the wetness of her blood on his face.

"There are more negotiations today. I think...I think I'll be okay. Just have to hold out a little longer. And if it comes to your release...we'll just get to that when we get there."

Even with his quicksilver mind, Kaidan didn't try to put that one together. His stomach was cramping from the flood of nutrients and his thoughts were fuzzy. He was exhausted, too, not having slept since before their mission where all this shit went to hell. Not to mention the mild concussion he was fairly certain he had. So he just looked at her, looked at her smile, swallowed back all the wrongness of the rawness in her movements, the crude grace that only hinted at her actual fluidity.

It was a mixture of weariness and a mental muddiness that dragged him down to a mix of sleep and nightmares, and he didn't know how far he sunk below the surface before an abrupt rash of noises brought him back up. He barely moved as he floated, head rolling a bit as he fought through every muscle in his body simply screaming at their abuse. It took him more than a bit to open his eyes and try to focus.

Shepard was in front of him, movements frantic, and he couldn't make out more than the flurry of her hands as she shoved her palm against his mouth, forcing the gag further down his throat.

"Shut up! Damn it, they'll come down here if they hear you, and then I can't protect you! Shut up!"

Her words were quick and vicious, having a bit of spine to them even through the terror in her voice. He groaned lowly as he absently tried to pull away from her. There was no logic, no reason for anything she was saying, and he was so damn tired.

"Shit...shit, shut up!"

Kaidan was pretty sure he wasn't making the noises she was hearing, but he still blinked up at her. She wasn't looking at him; instead, her focus was behind, down the corridor leading to the stairs. Then she growled under her breath and spun back to him, fear and determination playing clearly on her features. Shepard dropped to kneel one leg on the cargo bin he was strapped to, her knee wedging between his thighs tightly. He inhaled sharply as she reached forward and wrapped her left arm around his neck and leaned her weight back.

Instantly, he lost every chance to breathe.

Choking as his throat was pressed mercilessly against the tight line of his collar, Kaidan almost missed her other hand coming up. She wrapped her fingers tightly around his neck, her thumb and middle digit finding his arteries easily, and she pressed hard.

"You've got to shut up. I will keep you safe when you're under, I swear. But you have to shut up!"

His face flushing with heat as he worked his mouth uselessly around his gag, Kaidan felt a certain kind of anxiety he hadn't felt before as the edges of his vision started producing fuzzy static. Shepard frowned and pulled him against her harder, the rope around his throat biting through his skin. Her lips pressed tightly together as he jerked hard, trying desperately to get her off of him, to get air, to get anything to ease the fire burning in his lungs.

"Goddammit! I promised I wouldn't let you die! Will you just trust me?!"

He stared at her through watering eyes and dimming vision and saw a sort of painful despair that seemed to match what he felt. He tried to swallow, pushing at the tightness of her fingers over his pulse, and he felt the tendons on the inside of her elbow harden against the edge of his port.

It took longer than seconds but less than a minute for him to slide back under that dark blanket in his mind, the view of her dark, disturbed green eyes following him into nothingness. This time, he floated for longer, dreaming of fingerprints in his blood. It was far more pleasant than what he finally woke up to.

Nothing could've prepared Kaidan for the sight of Shepard standing before him, unsteady on her feet, his own rifle pointed at his face.

He bit down hard on his gag and managed to wrench his eyes from the barrel to her face. She was staring at him, her entire form shaking, eyes overflowing with tears and lips white. The gun wavered, aim switching from his face to his chest and back, and he watched her very, very carefully. The bright orange clip that glowed in the handle was so much brighter – and so much deadlier – than the blue concussion rounds he'd previously loaded into it. He had nothing, no recourse for speech, no breath of movement, nothing. He'd been down long enough that he'd already burned through the supplement she'd fed him, and his implant didn't respond when he reached for it.

"I told them...God, they won't listen, they keep pushing! What do I do, what do I do?" Shepard murmured to herself, shaking her head with a brutal movement, and the lieutenant saw her flinch. The rifle dropped as she shoved a hand against her neck, groaning. "God, it's not supposed to hurt like this! Not yet, not yet..."

She shivered and abruptly surged towards him, eyes _so close_ to aware, and she screamed, "It's not supposed to hurt yet! It hasn't stopped hurting since they put it in! It didn't hurt when you were alive! Why the fuck does it hurt?!"

Kaidan leaned back from the gun in his face, breathing rapidly through his nose as the mouth of the gun pressed hard against the skin above his gag, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He was so certain she was going to pull the trigger, so sure she was going to blow his head off, that when the cold metal fell away a few seconds later, he felt a rush of relief.

Briefly.

He didn't see her finger twitch or the flash from the muzzle, and he didn't see the jerk of the barrel as the recoil tugged it savagely upwards. He didn't see a lot of things. With the sound of the report, he didn't hear her quiet apology before the fact or the sound of her hitching sobs afterward. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard nothing.

But he felt the punch to his gut as a shard of metallic energy blew a hole in his arm.

Much as he wanted to scream – from pain, from shock, from the incredible understanding that his commander had just shot him point blank – he couldn't. He tried, of course, but the hot edge of the barrel tickled the side of his neck, just above his carotid, making him freeze. He could just make out a hissing noise that overwhelmed noises he made.

"Shh...please, I'll fix it, just don't make them make me kill you. They were pushing...trying to get me to negotiate for you next. But you have to be last. Shh, trust me! I promise, I'll save you."

The saliva was thick in Kaidan's throat as he blinked open his eyes, his own tears falling down his face. He was unashamed, and he stared at her as he tried to keep from hyperventilating. Shepard was kneeling in front of him, the gun nearly forgotten in her hands, and he jerked away from the burning tip. She wasn't paying him any attention, and was instead peering at his upper arm. His left sleeve was already soaked with blood, and she clicked her tongue and pulled at the fabric mercilessly.

"Should be just a flesh wound, but my vision isn't too good right now; we've been on this ship too long, I guess."

Even though the agony pulsing from the limb was turning his own vision to shadow, Kaidan pressed against his collar to look. Wincing, he picked out the wound through the blood, and made his own assessment. Yes, it was a flesh wound, a thick, deep score along the middle of his deltoid. He forced himself to flex his muscles as much as he could, ignoring the fresh flood of hot liquid down his arm, and he tilted his head back against the wall with a sort of drunk giddiness.

She hadn't hit the brachial nerve.

"They'll believe me now. This will give me good leverage for negotiations today. I should be able to barter your wound for more food, maybe even your release. I don't know...they keep changing the rules."

Kaidan didn't move, completely dazed, as Shepard bound up his wound with clumsy motions and a shoddy field dressing. She even apologized for the quality of it, a strange blush covering her cheeks, and she murmured, "Mom always said I couldn't do it right. Should've paid more attention in basic, I guess."

Then she reached up and pulled the cloth from his mouth for the second time, this time gently, and he didn't try to disguise his groan. His tongue was thick and swollen, and he licked his chapped lips. This time, she did have water, a plastic canteen from one of the crew lockers in the cargo bay, it looked like. Shepard tilted it carefully, slowly, giving him time to drink at his leisure, and Kaidan wasn't going to risk losing the chance to intake as much as possible. He knew he was pushing the boundaries at this point, his system taxed near completion, and he figured he'd been locked in Shepard's delusions for sixteen or so hours.

When she dropped the empty bottle, he took a few breaths before asking softly, "When are you getting us out of here, Shepard? Don't think I can do this too much longer."

The tenderness in her eyes nearly undid him as she pressed a rough hand against his cheek.

"I know, and I'm so sorry. It's been….negotiations have been really….I'm so sorry, sir. I promise, I won't let you die. I locked out part of their fuel system and made their drive line uneven, just like you taught me. It shouldn't take too long for the Alliance to find us. We've been gone for three weeks, and we're still in the same quadrant. I'm doing...I'm doing everything I can. And they don't have a clue I've got eezo in my system. Even when...I haven't lost control. Not yet."

She spoke more than she had the entire time she'd held him, and he stared at her, trying to process her words and piece them together while trying to ignore the feel of her skin or the faded bite of her biotics against his.

"You have a plan for getting us out of here, soldier?" Kaidan finally asked, trying to inject a little steel in the words. It had the effect he was looking for; she straightened a little and some of that haunted look that had crept into her eyes moved to the background. "Yes, captain. This should be the final push. If I can't trade this for food, you'll starve to death. They won't let that happen; you're too damn valuable. And since you're injured, they've lost any trust if it comes to hostage talks. I think...I think I've played this right. I think I have. And if I'm wrong, we're both dead anyway, sir."

Her words were calm, almost wooden, like she was reading from a script, and Kaidan winced as his arm pulsed with pain. Shepard dropped her hand from his face and fussed with his bandage, ultimately making it worse. She frowned at it, poking ineffectively at the knot, and she growled, "I swear, if I ever get my own command, I'm putting a field medic on my ground crew and I'm never starting a mission without him."

Chuckling slightly, Kaidan flinched as his arm burned, and realized that, if nothing else, she got that part right.

Shepard abruptly responded to something that only she could hear, jumping up and grabbing the gun from where she'd dropped it at his feet. She didn't stop to look at him, didn't stop to say anything, and simply tore ass down the corridor before disappearing around a corner. Kaidan watched her go and forced himself to try to relax, even though he could feel blood slipping down his arm. It soaked the lines holding him and dripped from his fingertips, and he counted the drops as they hit the metal on the floor.

He made it to eighty seven.

* * *

When next he woke up, everything was very, very different.

For one, he was no longer restrained in any fashion. Instead, he was on the cot that was always shoved in the corner of the lower engineering deck. His arm was also bound up better; not by much, but the bleeding was stopped in its entirety. There was that same canteen on the floor beside him, two white pills sitting on the top of it, and he readily identified them as pain killers. Besides that, there was also a small sealed pouch of the biotic supplement in the flavor he was used to.

It took several minutes – longer, if he was honest with himself – to get his body moving the way he wanted it to in order to take advantage of what he'd been left. Everything in him, every joint, every muscle, every tendon and ligament, was aching and stretched in all the wrong ways. It felt like a tourniquet of rusty barbed wire had been wrapped around his left arm for a week. His head pounded, his eyes burned, and his throat felt like he'd been gargling with a mixture of nails and sandpaper.

Also, he was alone, and that made him very, very nervous.

Shepard had already proven she could hide his biotics from him, and the fact that she had evidently released him but had also disappeared meant that she was likely still hallucinating. However, he was altered enough himself from his concussion that he didn't quite trust his own conclusions on the situation.

So he drank the water, downed the supplement, chewed one pill before swallowing the other, and redressed his wound with the old bandage. It was hardly sanitary, but he figured he had more pressing concerns than infection at this point. He had a laundry list of things to do, least of which was to contact Joker, but his arm burned, his head ached, and the meds were coursing through him fast. So he slept, accidentally, his loss of consciousness closer to passing out from extended duress and blood loss than actual slumber.

And when he opened his eyes, things were not so different, but so, so much worse.

He came to feeling like he wasn't alone, and a quick glance to the side proved him right. Shepard was there, just the same way he'd seen her before, though with a few more bruises and cuts than before. She was standing at the foot of the cot, an odd, watery smile on her face, and his rifle was lax in her hands.

Kaidan kept his eyes on it as he very carefully, very slowly stood up. He surreptitiously tested his movements as he did so, and was relieved to find his implant responding to him, albeit weakly.

"Captain, you're….good, you're okay. That's good," she said, and her affect was so flat that he shuddered. "I, um...I negotiated for your release. I guess you figured that part."

Kaidan felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as she raised the gun a little, still speaking in that unusual, horrible little voice. "The Alliance hasn't come yet. You were getting sick, so I didn't have a choice, sir. And remember when this all started? We swore that we would both survive, no matter what. So one last negotiation, and we're free."

She exhaled sharply, then took two quick steps towards him and shoved the gun into his hands. He almost dropped it as she quickly let it go and took a half step backwards, her eyes down. Kaidan held the rifle loosely, flummoxed, and he stared. Shepard took a shuddering breath, closed her eyes tight, and raised her hands.

Very slowly, she started unbuttoning his shirt where it hung loosely around her frame.

Jerking in place, Kaidan reached up and grabbed both of her hands in one of his, a dim sort of horror filtering through him.

"Shepard, what the hell are you doing?" he breathed softly, and she didn't open her eyes, but tugged ineffectively at his hold on her. "Captain, you promised me."

She pulled harder, and when she opened her eyes, they were miserable and swimming. She reached down and grabbed his right hand where it hung, loosely holding the gun. In a smooth motion, she forced it up and set the rifle against the side of her head, his wrist bending awkwardly with the angle.

"That makes it better, okay? Just pretend you're forcing me. It'll help with the guilt. Just fuck me and we can get out of here, please!"

The water in her eyes was dripping down her cheeks, and Kaidan felt his mouth go dry, if not at her current implications, then at the previous ones he'd overlooked. He felt sick, his gun against her hair, the vision of a thousand headshots at his own hands flooding through him, every soldier he'd ever killed looking at him with her green eyes. A freight train of revulsion slammed through him, and he suddenly hated everything about his job. His hand trembled as he pulled the rifle back fast, tabbing the safety with a quick flick of his finger – _God, it had rounds chambered and was up against her head and one wrong motion and blood and brains against the walls_.

Shepard was so strong, and so, so weak. He stared at her, this vision before him, this firecracker in his fatigues like he always dreamed of. But everything was so wrong, _so wrong_ , the tears, the fear, the way she was slumped and defeated. Her hands were in his but there was nothing romantic about it, and her skin felt cool under his fingers.

"God, stop looking at me like that. What, you need help getting started?" she bit out, abruptly angry, and she wrenched her hands free of his to slam a palm against his chest. There was that familiar bite, that familiar hum in the back of his head, something he'd missed so much he didn't know how he'd lived without it for the past day.

Then there was a surge of energy in his veins, and it shot straight to his groin. He jerked back and smacked her arm away, breathing heavily. He'd used his biotics in the bedroom, teasing moans of pleasure and surprise from the few women he'd bedded, but this…

She stared at him, hurt, a heaviness in her gaze that she had hidden the whole time. "Please, captain, I can't do this anymore," she whispered as she ducked her head, shoulders shaking, and Kaidan moved without thinking.

He dropped the rifle to the cot beside him and stepped forward, pulling her against him and folding his arms around her. She was stiff and tried pulling away, but he held her tight and pressed his forehead into her hair as he unleashed his implant and flared his biotics. It smarted more than usual as he revved it hard, desperate to close the chapter on this horror story they were both locked in. His body flashed blue before burning with cobalt fire. Shepard froze, though he heard her little gasp into his collarbone. He closed his eyes, blocking out everything, and reached out for her implant with his energy.

It was there, dark, wounded, hidden under layers of memory and fear, but it sung out to him like a songbird.

He could feel the moment life returned to something close to normal, and she leaned back from him a little, slowly raising her head. Her eyes, dim and cloudy for so long, were clear and terrified.

"Oh God...Kaidan?"

He smiled gently, and was perfectly prepared for the way her eyes rolled back into her head as she collapsed against him. He sunk to the hard metal decking with her, shifting her so he could check the pulse beating strongly in her veins. He stared at her for a moment, at the way her head lolled against his forearm, the way the slashes along the sides of her neck stood out against her pale skin, and he felt his heart shatter just a little too loudly in his head.

He was careful and gentle as he laid her on the floor, cradling her head and keeping his fingers away from her implant. Then he lunged to the side, leaned against the edge of the cot, and vomited. His eyes watered, tears dripped down his cheeks, and he panted for air between the lurching of his stomach.

 _Her eyes closed to the world while she unbuttoned his shirt…_

 _Her hand firm and grip tight as she pushed his gun against her skull…_

 _Her voice when she asked…_

His arm shook where he held himself up and he wrapped his other arm around himself, a sort of keening noise echoing from deep in his throat. He'd seen death and destruction and the retreat of a broken army. But this, the defeat and acceptance and filtered hopelessness in her voice... _Shepard's voice!_ No, it didn't go together. The woman was a spitfire, a soldier to the bone, and this…

Kaidan knew, in that moment, that he would give every bit of himself, every part of him that was his to give, his to sacrifice, to keep this woman from ever sounding like that again.

* * *

An hour later, Kaidan sat on the edge of a medical bed and firmly ignored Karin's fussing over his arm. The medi-gel was already taking care of the early stages of an infection, and his head was clearing from his concussion. Modern medicine was beautiful sometimes.

" _This is Alenko, authorization Whiskey Foxtrot Romeo seven seven nine Delta. Lift the lockdown and get the doctor and Garrus to the lower engineering deck."_

Chakwas tried to talk to him when they found him. But he hadn't said anything, had ignored everything she and Garrus had said. He couldn't hide the gunshot wound, the thin trails of blood down his wrists and neck from where he'd stressed too much against his bindings. He couldn't explain away the knife wounds on her skin. So he said nothing then and nothing now. Instead, he stared at a very particular spot of wall on the side of the infirmary and counted lights out of the corner of his eye.

" _Jesus, Kaidan! Dammit, you've been out of contact for almost thirty six hours! Where the hell have you been?"_

When he'd stood and had immediately collapsed back to his knees while thin bile crawled up his throat, Garrus had awkwardly waited by him as the doctor checked on the commander. Kaidan could barely crawl at that point, exhaustion and shock pulling him in two different directions. So Karin had shored him up under her shoulders, Garrus had lifted Shepard bridal-style, and they'd made a strange convoy to the infirmary. Garrus had fled immediately, a strange hue in his mandibles that Kaidan distantly placed as blushing. Meanwhile, Chakwas was humming unhappily at his blood pressure and muttering something under her breath, and he sipped his sugar water very slowly.

" _I've got Shepard. She's unconscious and needs medical attention. I need Wrex to start searching for the two missing corporals, ASAP."_

Frustration and anger surged abruptly, flooding him, and a single word floated to the forefront of his consciousness as the rest of his brain caught up with reality: _Anderson!_ Suddenly jumping to his feet, Kaidan silenced the doctor with a look and leveled a pointed glare at the still form in the far bed. Karin nodded and immediately sat down in the chair next to their unconscious commander. She was still, quiet, bandages wrapped around her neck and sedatives dripping quickly into a clear IV.

On the screen beside her, the EEG danced its regular dance.

There was no one to be found between the infirmary and the communications room. For this, Kaidan was thankful. His mood was all over the place, sorrow and fear and bitterness breaching the walls he'd built around himself. It was a short radio burst to Joker - _"_ _It's Alenko. Get me Anderson, now."_ \- that got the message lights blinking with standby. After he slapped the panel, the lieutenant didn't have to wait long at the comm station for the holograph engines to spin up. Still, it was long enough for him to pull the sling off his arm and shrug into his over shirt. It was a different one than Shepard had stolen, and he didn't button it up.

When Anderson shimmered onto the platform, Kaidan stared at him quietly for a minute before he said in a low, venomous voice, "My commanding officer, Spectre Shepard, held me captive for thirty six hours, throttled me, shot me, then fucking tried to make me...Jesus, Anderson. I don't give two shits what security clearances I do or don't have. What the hell happened?"

The other man was hardly surprised by the question, but he still seemed to age a decade in a heartbeat. He sighed and looked at someone out of the corner of his eye, an unspoken command passing through the gesture. The sounds of movement echoed through the connection for a few seconds before it was silent, and it was no one but the two of them.

"I'm sorry, lieutenant. I had hoped that her connection to you...your biotics are exceptionally tuned to the others wavelength; I hoped that would keep her grounded. Then you mentioned the damaged fuel lines, and I realized that...well, we just don't have that kind of luck," he started softly, voice dark and guarded.

Kaidan nearly growled as he stalked forward and slammed a fist into the console, steadfastly ignoring the sharp bite of his arm under its medi-gel plaster.

"Fuck luck. What the hell happened to her?"

Anderson met his gaze easily, the weight of decades of secrets and command visible in his eyes, and he seemed to measure the other man for a few seconds before he sighed heavily.

"It was her second mission. She was a rookie, just sixteen and barely out of boot camp, though she showed so much promise, even then. The admiralty thought she had significant biotic aptitude at that point, and her next stop was a testing academy and then, well, she would go on to be fitted with the L3. But the transport she was on was diverted to respond to a downed shuttle. It was on a tiny moon in the Artemis Tau system, a chunk of nothing rock that should never have been scouted in the first place."

Staring at Anderson, Kaidan felt his mouth going dry as the holograph kept speaking.

"It was a trap, of course. Pirates or some such – they never were able to determine exactly their loyalties. There wasn't much left to search for after Shepard...after she cut loose."

Dropping his eyes, Anderson shifted on his platform, then continued in his icy, pained tone, "They were slavers of some kind, though. That much was apparent from the...evidence, afterwards. There were seventy seven people on that transport, not including Shepard and the captain. And in twenty nine days, she was able to negotiate for the release of all of them. Her captors...they weren't kind," he trailed off here, and Kaidan raised a shaky hand to wipe at his mouth.

Seventy seven _negotiations_ …

"Jesus Christ, commander," he whispered, and he crossed his arms in some pitiful defense against what he was hearing.

"The prisoners were released in spurts, life pods from the captured vessel floating through the system with beacons blaring. It took them awhile to find the ship, but she'd sabotaged the drive core, which gave the Alliance half a chance, at least. Thirty days after the ship had been taken, it was finally found drifting in the gravity well of a large asteroid. The captain was dead, his head sliced clean off, and so were all the slavers. They were, uh, disintegrated, actually. There were piles of blue ash throughout the ship. Shepard was the only one alive, and I was the one who found her."

Whatever composure the other man had held up until then, he lost part of it, and Kaidan hid his own eyes behind his hand. "She was...she was naked, and broken, and there was blood and eezo covering every inch of her," he whispered, and he looked away. "It took us six weeks to get her to speak again, and three months...three months to stop her from screaming every night."

Then, Anderson cleared his throat, Kaidan looked up, and the captain said quietly, "It was my uncle, the man whom she stayed behind to save. She had secured her own release the first day, so the slavers – some code from hell – gave her free leave of the ship. She stole food to keep the prisoners fed, alive; she gave them hope. My uncle...she gave every inch of herself to save his life, and in the end, her last...negotiation completed, the bastards that captured them killed him out of spite. They...said she'd cheated."

Remembering the sickening jolt of her biotics through his blood, Kaidan breathed, "Her eezo...she tried...she asked me to rape her. She _begged me_ , Anderson. Do you have any idea...any idea what seeing her like that could have done to the crew? Any idea what the _fuck_ it did to _me_?"

The tightening of the lines at Anderson's eyes were visible, even in the raw quality of the holographics. "I'm sorry, lieutenant. If I had thought, even for a moment, that she was so far into that memory, I would have dispatched help. I would have sent every goddamn ship in the Fifth Fleet to help you. But I thought...you two have a connection, much as you try to deny it. I had hoped that would protect you."

There were several seconds of silence while Alenko fought back the eviscerating emotions that were cutting him like knives. The fact that Shepard's version of protecting him had been tying him up, choking him, shooting him...an old adage about friends versus enemies crossed his mind, and he ruthlessly shoved it aside and focused on the truth of it. Kaidan softly said, "It might have. She, uh...she didn't kill me. Saw me as an ally, not an enemy. Not like Eisner and Botham."

Cocking his head with the obvious question, Alenko waved it away, "Wrex found them in a side corridor shortly after I lifted the lockdown. They're going to be fine. Broken arm, broken leg, concussions, some physical therapy ahead of them. Hell, all they remember is falling. They have no idea what happened. If she had wanted to kill them, she could have. Something held her back."

There was a familiar upwards tilt of the captain's mouth and he whispered, "That-a-girl, Shepard."

Kaidan was quiet for, what felt like, a long while, and there was nothing but the buzz of holographics for several minutes.

"Sir...how do you want me to handle this? If Udina or the Council found out about this, she'd be finished."

There it was in black and white, and Anderson fixed him with an unreadable look. "That depends on you. You're the only one who can testify on the events of the last thirty six hours in their entirety. If you wish to press charges...I won't stop you. Shepard would probably help you file them, actually."

It was a painful admission, but an honest one. He stared at the ground for several seconds, the memory of the terror of the last two days warring against a loyalty that was soul deep at this point. Then, even as his arm twinged, Kaidan looked up and shook his head. "Charges against whom and for what, captain? I dropped my rifle in the cargo bay and it discharged. I might need to be written up for that, actually."

With a faint smile, Anderson declined, "Negative. I think...I think lessons have been learned here." Whatever levity was in his face died immediately as he stepped forward and added, "Lieutenant Alenko...Kaidan. She speaks highly of you in her reports, and has recommended you for several advancements when this mess with Saren is over. She believes in you, and what's more, Shepard trusts you. I think you know her well enough to know what a strange and different thing that is for her, but know that how you deal with this, how you _help her_ deal with this….this is a turning point. For both of you."

Blinking at the revelations, Kaidan ducked his head and exhaled slowly, feeling a weight in his chest both lighten and tighten at the same time. Then, with a tired but determined nod, he looked back up at the image.

"Aye aye, sir. I won't let you down. Either of you."

* * *

He wasn't sure why he was expecting to find her anywhere else.

Kaidan had been standing at the back of the room, his left shoulder against the wall, his arms crossed and eyes distant as he stared at a familiar crate. He noted that the ropes around the pipes were gone, but the scorch mark and burgundy splatter were still there. Shaking his head and forcing away the memory even though his arm smarted at the movement, he looked to his right, down the short corridor that led to the small alcove in the back.

Shepard was leaning against another crate, her gaze distant as she idly focused on the cot in front of her. Kaidan swallowed and started towards her silently, ignoring the sight of his own bloodstain on the fabric bed.

"You wouldn't happen to have any ammonia or peroxide in the medbay, would you? These kinds of stains are a bitch to get out."

Her voice was flat, like he expected, but held the smoothness he'd grown fond of over the last six months. He didn't answer for a moment as he came up next to her, refusing to put pressure on her with his gaze. Instead, he leaned on the crate next to her and put his palms flat on the surface behind him, shifting his weight back.

"I'm sure I could find something, Shepard," he finally answered noncommittally, and she gave a faint puff of a snort at that. "I'm sure you could, lieutenant. Probably be right next to that cure for insanity and my court martial, right?"

Kaidan hesitated, risked looking at her out of the corner of his eye, and waited a few beats before he said softly, "I thought we agreed not to use ranks in private."

This sparked an anger he was familiar with, a stubborn mix of guilt and self-hatred that clung to her with every failed mission. She turned briskly and grabbed at his upper arm. He flinched and pulled back enough that she missed, and Shepard's green eyes flashed with shameful smugness at his reaction as she bit out, "Was that before or after I shot you?"

There was a heavy stillness that settled over the both of them, her standing before him with fists clenched and him half twisted away. Kaidan kept her gaze, though, something in him feeling to his core that if he didn't, he'd never truly see her again.

"I asked Anderson what happened, and he told me."

She hadn't thought he knew. It was apparent in the way every shade of color drained from her face, leaving her ghostly. The anger came back again and it was sharper, much more visceral, and she abruptly shoved him against the cargo container. The feel of her biotics on his chest made him flinch again, but he still refused to look away.

"You _asshole!_ " she snapped as she stepped back, lips pressed into a thin line. She didn't say anything else, though, and Kaidan wasn't keen to break the silence. This wasn't something he knew how to fix, not really, and he was making it up as he went.

"Why did you try to cut out your implant?" he asked abruptly, and the question made her falter, put her at a sudden disadvantage. "I don't know. I don't...hell, I don't even remember doing it," she said, all anger evaporating. Instead, she just seemed so tired, so drained, and she dropped to sit on the edge of the cot. Without realizing it, one of her hands went to rest on the mark that had ruined it.

"All I really remember is...the fear, fear like I didn't think I'd ever feel again. And my L3 hurt, like it always does, but back then, I didn't have it. It was wrong. And everything else...it was like a dream I couldn't wake up from."

Kaidan stayed where he was, just watched her as he listened.

Shepard didn't look away from him, though her gaze grew a little foggier and her voice a little colder, and he didn't blame her. "It was thirty days, but it never felt like that long to me. Maybe a week, maybe a year, but never a month."

She fell silent for a long enough time that Kaidan felt comfortable enough to prompt her, "You saved seventy seven crew members?"

Shepard nodded absently and responded, "Yeah...though I don't know if that's how I would describe it. Three committed suicide in the weeks following, five more in the years after. A few went on permanent disability, and ten were discharged from the military. Two ended up in prison. A third of them with futures no different than if they'd died on that ship, and two thirds with enough red tape around their files that they can't climb higher than glorified midshipmen. And then the captain..." A wry smile crossed her lips and she repeated, "Yeah, saved. Not how I'd describe it."

Kaidan crossed his arms very deliberately, not hiding the ligature marks on his wrists or throat, and stared at her hard. "That's exactly how I'd describe it." She blinked up at him, some more awareness coming back to her, and there was no humor in her voice as she bit out the truth of it. "I fucked a pirate crew for a month to send twenty four people to an early grave or worse. How did that save them?"

Bristling at the ice in her words as well as her wording, Kaidan swallowed hard as he risked moving and slowly knelt down in front of her. He placed a very still hand on hers where it rested on his blood, and he looked up at her.

"You sacrificed everything you had to give seventy seven people their best chance at life, a chance to make their own choices. And no matter how much you want to believe otherwise, you are not responsible for how they honored that sacrifice. You could have...there is so much less you could have done with your life. You could have gone on and become exactly like all of them. You could have ended up nothing more than a pile of blue ash on metal. But you became so much more."

He paused, acutely aware of the fact that Shepard was looking at him – _looking at him, seeing him, recognizing his whiskey eyes against the haze of pain and memory_ – and gave her a faint smile.

"You became an N7, the commander of the Normandy, the first human Spectre, and you became...you became someone I cannot imagine losing." He paused, squeezed her hand gently, and added softly, "You're a hero, Shepard. Mine, theirs. You're your own hero, too, if you want to be."

She blinked, lone tears trailing down her face, and simply stared at him. It was like the concept that she was something other than the hell she'd been through at sixteen was alien. But then she pulled on his hand, and he rose to sit next to her. She said nothing as she simply laid her head on his shoulder, and he didn't hesitate to rest his cheek on her hair.

"Garrus...he won't say anything. He won't look at you any different. Turians are a strange bunch, but they know war and what it does to people. Karin's got that whole doctor-patient confidentiality thing. The rest of the crew doesn't know, Shepard. And they won't. But...I'm here, if you need to talk about it."

His words were whispered but firm, soothing a fear that he could feel in her frame. She shifted a little against him, uncomfortably reminded of her own weakness, and he reached up and wrapped an arm around her.

"I mean...how do I even do that? I've lived with it this long...talking about it seems like a waste of your time." she asked softly, a bit of loathing in her voice. "Hallmark doesn't have anything for this situation."

The corners of his lips turned up and he nuzzled her hair slightly, a flash of his gun against her head cutting across his senses before fading.

"Talking about this doesn't make you a whiner, and it doesn't make you immature. It makes you human."

She snorted, then, recognizing her own words being thrown in her face.

"This is where I say that I get it, but it's embarrassing that you have to tell me that?" she asked softly, and he gave a slight shrug. The familiar hum of their biotics danced together in the back of his brain, and he let the feel of them purge the memory of her hand on his chest. "This isn't going to be like me and Rahna. This hasn't changed anything. Not for the worse, anyway."

Shepard relaxed against him a little at that, more of her innate fear dimming, and she asked cautiously, "Not for the worse?"

Kaidan said nothing to that, simply pulled her a little closer and held her tight. They sat there for awhile, both of their duties fallen to the wayside for the moment. It was a quiet bubble of their own brand of peace, something that only front line soldiers would be able to survive, or even appreciate.

The lieutenant was hesitant to break the comfortable silence, but the smell of her pepper shampoo tickled his nose and he couldn't stop the slight grin that crossed his face. He mindlessly pressed a kiss to her forehead and murmured, "You know, after you saved my ass from the beacon on Eden Prime, I think this makes us even."

The shake in her shoulders after that was not due to tears.

* * *

 _~ We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves. ~_


End file.
